


Memories, Lies, and Rumors

by Transposable_Element



Series: Love and Honor [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Cultural Differences, Family, Gen, Lies, Political plots, Regret, Scheming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transposable_Element/pseuds/Transposable_Element
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way to Narnia to see his daughter for the first time in six years, Kidrash evaluates past mistakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories, Lies, and Rumors

Kidrash paced the poop deck of the _Splendour Hyaline_. It was dawn, and the only other men on deck were sailors. His cabin was adequate—though the northern aesthetic was crude, he found it rather pleasant, especially compared to some of the excesses of Tashbaan. But when he needed to think he preferred the open air, always. And he needed to think. So much new information, and so much yet to learn.

If these northern barbarians were to be believed—and he was certain now that the kind of elaborate ruse he had initially suspected was beyond them—his daughter was alive and well and waiting for him in the north. He would see her in a few days, and what would he say to her? In her letter, she wrote that she had put aside her anger, but not that she had forgiven him, a subtlety that had gone a long way toward convincing him that the letter truly came from Aravis’s hand. There was no point in telling her that he had never intended her to go to that awful old man’s bed. Revealing his real plan to her would only anger her again, increase her grievance. Much as it galled him, he would have to continue the pretence of having been persuaded by his wife.

He had realized too late that his daughter’s sense of honor was more like a man’s than a woman’s. A tarkheena had many options for controlling an aged husband—poisons to ensure that he was impotent, for example—but Aravis either didn’t know about them or thought the use of them beneath her. She could not endure a public role as the wife of a man such as Ahoshta, could not endure the idea of belonging to him, even as a legal fiction.

When Aravis seemed to be so pleased with the match, Kidrash thought that she had somehow guessed his plan, or at least the part of it that involved her. He ought to have known better. And then, when he received the letter feigned to be from Ahoshta he had been incensed, fearing that the man had violated the terms of the marriage contract, which stipulated that Aravis was not to be broached until she was at least 14 years old. (When he discovered that she had instead run away he was at first relieved, as well as impressed by the cleverness of her escape.) Of course, if all had gone according to plan, Aravis would have been a widow long before her 14th birthday—a wealthy widow at a young age, the role to which any tarkheena with ambition aspired.

Kidrash wondered that so many aged men took the risk of marrying a young wife. Did they not know they were flirting with an early grave? He supposed that they believed, against all reason, that their young wives loved them. Or else they relied on bodyguards and food tasters, as if that would be sufficient protection from a person living in one’s own house, with access to one’s food, one’s possessions, one’s bed. Kidrash had no illusions about this. He was 48 and vigorous, still capable of attracting a lady to his bed, but the disaster of his second marriage had made him cautious. He had loved his first wife, Aravis’s mother, who had taught him so much, but he could not remember what it had been like to love her. He would not marry again.

His eldest son was a warrior born; if he had lived, he would never have married and would never have concerned himself with politics. His death had been a blow, but Aravis’s disappearance, following so soon after it, was worse. His grief had led Kidrash to rather spoil Rishti, who was a good-natured boy, bright enough, affectionate, but light-minded. Kidrash had seen to it that he was equipped to become a competent administrator of the estate, but it was obvious that the marriage Kidrash arranged for him would make or break his career at the Tisroc's court. Tirivis…if only she did not look so much like her mother. He ought to forgive her for that. Of all his children, Aravis was the one he loved best, and he had wronged her deeply. He had drawn her into his plans without consulting her, had rightly feared trusting her with the truth. He would have made his daughter into a murderer—or an accomplice to murder, at the very least. Even had the plan succeeded, it would not have been worth that. But what was the point in thinking about it? The damage was done, and for nearly six years he had cursed his own folly.

And now he learned from her letter that she might have killed herself, a thought that nearly stopped his heart. The woman who had persuaded her to flee instead—he owed her a debt of gratitude so deep it could never be repaid. But he was puzzled as to who she might be; there had been no slaves of northern birth on the estate six years ago. Maybe some local landowner had married a barbarian wife, but if so, he knew nothing of it.

Aravis wrote that she had changed. How? Did she wear those ridiculous northern fashions, drink wine, dance with men, worship their gods, consort with their demons? By all the gods, did she ride _side saddle_? He found northern notions of propriety baffling. Ladies went bare-headed in public, but they balked at sitting a horse properly. Perhaps that had to do with the presence of talking beasts and half-human demons in the north; if the creature you were riding was not merely a beast but in some sense intelligent….Still, objecting to a woman sitting astride a horse struck him as evidence of a rather disgusting degree of prurience, an uncouth obsession with what was between a woman's legs. He knew Aravis must have resisted being made to ride side saddle, and he hoped she was stubborn enough to insist on continuing to ride astride. No argument for propriety could justify the sin of putting a side saddle on a good horse!

The Narnian kings and queens were baffling, too, although he thought he was beginning to understand them. Peridan’s comment about the High King’s intimacies suggested that he was a lover of men, something that Kidrash had long assumed: it seemed natural enough, given his reputation as a great warrior, and it was the most obvious explanation for why a powerful king, nearly 30, had not made a marital alliance. But in Tashbaan he had seen convincing evidence that King Edmund was not at all averse to the company of women, making it all the more puzzling that he had not yet married. Did not these kings and queens understand the importance of getting an heir?

Kidrash had not met Queen Susan when she was in Tashbaan, having been preoccupied by his search for Aravis. He assumed that she was a foolish woman, having had the bad judgment to entertain Rabadash’s proposal. By all accounts she was extremely beautiful, but as far as Kidrash was concerned that could never make up for a lack of wit.

The younger queen was the most mysterious of the four. She had never traveled to Calormen, and he had heard many rumors about her, but few reliable reports. According to the rumors, she was a bloodthirsty Amazon, a gifted healer, a priggish virgin, a manipulative whore, the lover of one or both of her brothers, the concubine of the Lion demon, an otherworldly mystic, a girlish innocent who had never grown up. Of course he could ask King Edmund or Lord Peridan what she was like, but he thought he might as well wait to meet her and see for himself what she was.

The wind was rising with the sun. Kidrash was no sailor, but the weather looked fair to him. The wind was cold and bracing. Scanning the foredeck, he saw King Edmund and his friend Lord Peridan emerge from below. Kidrash approved of the young king, who had a surprisingly subtle mind for a barbarian. The idea of a political alliance was tempting. He wondered if he could persuade Aravis, if she insisted on marrying a barbarian, to transfer her affections to Edmund. He would be a much better match than the crown prince of Archenland—a country poor and weak, whose main asset was its close alliance with Narnia. But then he strove to rein in his ambitions. Surely he now knew better than to assume anything about Aravis’s intentions, or to press her to fall in with his plans. She was her own woman. That, at least, he had learned.


End file.
